


Love is Art and You're My Canvas

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, also SHAHID is in this for like 3-4 sentences lmaaao, harry thinks his nipples are going to feed babies, liam is just reasonable, louis is soft and likes to be troublesome, niall harry and liam are sort of there, niall is a bit dumb, zayn is an emotional art kid that pretends he's tough i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 20:51:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3743173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>zayn is fresh out of juvenile detention, louis is blind and both of them are the only ones who truly know how to take care of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is Art and You're My Canvas

**Author's Note:**

> a considerable amount of research was conducted during the progression of writing this but i'm not sure if that's evident it's probably not but the gist is that i tried okaY
> 
> also the sex is only like one paragraph sorry to disappoint
> 
> trigger warning: mentions of homophobic slurs
> 
> (editing is a very, very, very weak point of mine i'm sorry if that becomes obvious)

Zayn’s intentions were pretty dead set when they let him out and his intentions were this: the previous year never happened, today is a new day, yesterdays are irrelevant, tomorrows are comprised of second chances and amendments and there is no room to dwell on his previous fuck-ups. In summation: the past can eat shit, today is a new day and he’s going to start trying.

Except there is something that he did not foresee and that something was this: trying is really fucking hard. Not even in glaring ways. Even with the Top 40 hits playing, the air is oppressive enough to drown out the sappy lyrics and melodic beats. His family had welcomed him with hesitant yet open arms and the small talk was awkward, as if everyone was tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. It seems that they too had adopted the same frame of mind. No one’s going to ask him about juvenile detention, nor are they berating him for his questionable lifestyle choices. It seems along with Zayn, as far as they’re concerned, none of that ever happened.

“You hungry?” Trisha asks him. He’s been lingering in the kitchen for five minutes, nostalgically eyeing the tiled floor and the ceramic countertops. “Zayn?”

“Hm?”

“I said ‘are you hungry’?”

“Nah, I’m good, mum,” he says and that’s that.

He spends the next hour in his room, which feels the same—like his, like no one else’s. Nothing catches him off guard except for how impeccably tidy and untouched it is. His drawings on the wall are still there, the same canvas that he’d been working on before he’d left is still on its easel, unfinished. Despite its cleanliness, he can’t help but feel like it’s all been decimated somehow.

The house is soon brought to life, its pulse provoked by soft music from one of the other rooms, the TV downstairs and Trisha cooking in the kitchen. Everything is normal and Zayn is out of place. So, naturally, he goes outside, where the wind is fresh and comes and goes leaving no time for judgement.

“You going out?” Trisha asks.

“Yep,” he says. Then he realises why this would raise concerns, so then he says, “I’ll be back soon. I won’t go far.”

There’s a stare and he doesn’t blame her for no longer wanting to trust him as much as she’d like to. But it can’t all be that different, because she lets him go anyway.

If he’s going to do this whole ‘new me’ thing, then he should probably quit smoking, but he justifies the cigarette he takes out with ‘one step at a time’. Because, realistically, change works systematically. You take one step, then another, and another, then maybe you’ll leap the next time around, you’ll fall, you get back up.

It’s all going great. He takes twelve steps down the sidewalk in front of his house before he’s bumping into someone.

“Can you watch where you’re going?” the guy says.

“Um, can you?” Zayn says. He drops his lighter, which is very irritating, because he’s going to have to bend down and pick it up and— _god_ —the unwarranted energy that he needs to exert to do all that.

“I can’t actually.”

Zayn’s about go off on what a stupid statement that was until he takes notice of the white cane. Then he just kind of wants to melt into the sidewalk, but before that be beaten up relentlessly.

“I’m so sorry,” Zayn says.

“It’s okay. Are you new? I’ve never heard your voice before.”

Zayn stands up properly then examines what can only be described as a very, very fine specimen of a boy in front of him. His jeans make it easy to distinctly see the outline of the bum that he’s packing, and Zayn decides it’s being a spectacular one.

“New? No. I’ve lived here my entire life. Are _you_ new?”

“I moved here last year. I’m Louis.”

“Zayn.”

“You don’t sound old.”

“Uh, I’m sixteen.”

“Interesting. I’m seventeen.”

Zayn nods. Louis is standing with his side towards him and Zayn’s wondering whether or not to turn him around to face him directly. But then he thinks that wouldn’t make a difference. Then someone’s calling Louis’ name.

“It’s my mother,” Louis says, as if this is bad news. Then he turns around and walks the pathway up to his house and Zayn watches him disappear through his front door.

“Have you met Louis?” Zayn asks at dinner.

“Louis?” Yasser asks.

“Yes. Louis.”

“The next door neighbour, dad,” Doniya says.

“The blind one,” Waliyha says.

“Oh Louis!” Trisha says. “Yes Louis is very lovely. Sometimes they invite us over. He moved in just after you—uh—left.”

“Mhm.”

After dinner Zayn goes back up to his room, but his efforts are hindered when Safaa stops him by the stairs and asks him if he’s okay. It was at that point that Zayn thought he would cry, but he didn’t—couldn’t—and told her that he was fine, hugged her, then made it to his room.

That night Zayn had dreams about his arrest and woke up feeling as if his room were smaller and he was being strangled by the very darkness he was shrouded in. He turned on the lights to find that everything was normal, desk where it always was, easel and canvas standing where it always stood, everything where it should be and fitting like puzzle pieces. Except one piece was astray, and Zayn couldn’t help but feel fake-deep and think that one arbitrary piece was him.

 

 

 

 

From Zayn’s window there isn’t much that he could see except for the side wall of the neighbour’s house, unless he stood at one particular angle then he could see a good portion of their backyard too. But that wasn’t the point. Their backyard is fine, yes, but Louis seemed to be there on most days, walking in every direction in that one confined space. It was summer, blistering lazy day after day until school was back on. He had to be honest with himself—it’s not like he was going to do anything productive.

He went downstairs. Trisha asked him where he was going. He said he was going out. Yasser gave him an uneasy stare—one that he seemed to be fond of, and even more fond of directing it to him and him only—and after that there was no more trouble with exiting through the front door. He walked down the side wall of the neighbouring house and approached Louis slowly.

“Louis.”

Louis turns and faces him. “Zayn?” he asks.

“Uh—yeah. What are you doing?”

“Walking. What are you doing in my backyard? Did my parents really let you in?”

“No. Would they be mad if they found out I wandered here on my own without asking?”

“I don’t know. Probably. Definitely.”

Zayn felt Louis’ cane jab him in the shin him. Hard.

“Ah! What the fuck, Louis?” he shouts, hopping a bit as if his sudden movement would assuage the sting in his shin.

“You were in my way,” Louis says, then giggles, grinning wide. “It would be nice to have a friend. Like a little partner in crime. My parents don’t let me talk to anyone.” He bypasses Zayn and continues walking, his cane moving to and fro on the ground in swift motions. Then he makes a u-turn and walks back towards Zayn, who is still kind of nursing his pain and who is also sort of intrigued. Not sure by what specifically. But he finds Louis intriguing in general.

“Aren’t you going to apologise for hitting me?” Zayn asks.

Without stopping, Louis says, “Nope.”

“Well aren’t you quite nice then.”

“I sure am,” Louis says. Then he stops, turns back, and continues walking till his cane hits Zayn’s shoe. “I’m sorry, Zayn. I’m sorry I hurt your poor shin. You can hit me with this too if you’d like.” Louis holds the cane out towards Zayn.

“Um—I’m not going to hit you with your own cane.”

“But you can. See look…“ Louis wiggles the cane in his hand. “…I am giving you permission to hit me with this cane.”

“I won’t hit you with your own cane.”

“Why? Because I’m blind?”

Zayn hesitates. “Well—no! I mean—you don’t hit people. That’s, like, simple morals and ethics or some shit.”

Louis grins, then holds his cane back towards the ground. “Well aren’t _you_ nice then, Mr Zayn.”

“Malik,” Zayn says. “It’s Zayn Malik.”

“Cool. I’m Louis Tomlinson.”

“Louis?”

Louis walks past Zayn, ignoring his mother, who stops just outside the sliding glass door. She looks at Zayn, giving him a scrutinising up and down stare. “Who on Earth are you?” she asks.

“Mother, this is Zayn. He’s a lad.”

She gives him an incredulous look. “A _lad_?”

“ _Friend_ ,” Louis clarifies. “He wandered into our backyard wanting to talk to me. Because he’s my friend. And friends talk to each other. Not that you ever let me have a friend.”

“Huh,” she says. “Well, um, lunch is ready if you’re done with your walk.”

“May my friend join us?” Louis asks, just starting to make his u-turn.

“I—of course. He may if he’d like.”

“Would love to,” Zayn says. “Thank you, Mrs Tomlinson.”

She huffs, then slides the door closed.

“She’s a bit of a wanker,” Louis says. He walks towards Zayn and when he stands beside him he shrinks his cane and grabs onto Zayn’s arm. “Will you walk me in?”

“Sure. What are friends for?”

Louis smiles.

Lunch with the Tomlinsons is pleasant, except Zayn can’t shake the unsettled vibe towards him emitting from Louis’ parents. His sisters are well good, nice, and the younger ones like to ask a lot of questions. Surely, Zayn’s parents must’ve slipped some information to Louis’ folks about him. He can’t deny that the whole neighbourhood probably knows about his arrest. Shit—maybe even Louis knows. If he does, then he doesn’t make a big deal out of it.

“So, Zayn,” Louis’ father, Mark, says. “It’s not common for boys your age to have tattoos is it?”

This makes Zayn look down at his arms. “Um, no. S’pose not.” His tattoos are nothing special—at the moment at least. They’re stick and pokes he did himself and with former-friends that aren’t particularly well done. He plans on going over them professionally when he’s older and has the money.

“Does that make it hard for you to find jobs and such?” His mother, Johannah, asks.

“I’m not really looking for jobs at the moment. But it wouldn’t be hard to cover them up if I was.”

He knows they’re trying to rile him up, or to make him feel ashamed for his lifestyle choices—or whatever. He’s not going to give in to this. Not from these people anyway. The quaintness of their home and Johannah’s pickiness makes him feel queasy. Louis and his sisters feel more like human beings—the type who feel things and ask non-condescending questions.

“So, what’s it feel like to be back at it, Malik?” Mark asks.

“That’s, uh, an interesting question. What do you mean?” Zayn asks. He feels as if with each response he’s enabling them to defame him.

“Well, you know, an arrest is permanently on the record.”

“Don’t make Zayn talk about that, dad,” Louis says. “I have no doubt in my mind that Zayn’s interesting, but we’re all trying to eat.”

His parents shut up after that, but the tension continues to burn in the air, a kind of burn that simmers underneath Zayn’s skin.

“You’re going straight home after this, correct Zayn?” Johannah asks him once most of them are done.

“’Course,” he says. “Thanks for lunch.”

She says nothing. When he approaches the sliding glass doors he feels someone grab onto his arm. “Come into my room,” Louis says.

“Nah. I gotta go home.”

“Do you really? Or are you scared of me mum?” He tugs Zayn’s arm. “Come with me to my room.”

Zayn can’t help but allow Louis to drag him into his room anyway, one arm linked with Zayn and his free hand tracing the other side of the wall, guiding himself. He is indeed led safely into a room and Louis even closes the door. He leads him into the centre of the room and forces Zayn onto the floor with him.

“I’ve never had someone in my room before. Well. You know—someone who isn’t a part of my family.”

It was weird. Louis’ room was a different kind of quiet, a forbidden kind, like he’s just stampeded into forbidden territory bursting with all kinds of secrets he couldn’t even fathom—even though Louis _did_ drag him in here himself. The thing about the quiet is that it makes him pay acute attention to everything. So the beige colour of Louis’ walls become glaring and each tiny sound is amplified and echoes right by his ears. “I’m sorry,” Louis then says. “About my mum and dad. They’re a bit intrusive.”

“It’s cool,” Zayn says. “I mean fair enough.”

“No. Not fair enough. I don’t care if you went to jail. I mean if you’re worried about that.”

“I’m not,” Zayn says, although he kind of was. Always will be for a long time, he guesses. “So why don’t your parents let you have people around?”

“Oh—that. I guess it’s not _entirely_ their fault. I don’t necessarily have any friends. Like—there’s Stan. And others. But I knew them when I was way younger. I could be held accountable for that. But then again I _can’t._ Because my parents don’t let me go to school. And I’m seventeen for Christ’s sake. Where the fuck do I get friends if I don’t go to school?”

Zayn nods. “Doesn’t matter. Like, you can go to school and still have no friends.”

Louis’ nose scrunches up. “That’s just _sad_.”

They laugh.

“So what do you do if you don’t go to school?”

Louis shrugs. “Walk around in my backyard. Read. Listen to music. Play piano,” he says.

“You can play?”

“Pssht. Yeah. You don’t have to see to play music. It’s just one of those things. Something I know I could never do is art.”

“Art?” Zayn asks. Because that is something he _can_ do, let alone the _only_ thing he can do.

“Well—yeah. You have to, like, see colours and shit. And, you know…” he motions at his eyes. “I can’t necessarily see shit.”

“Ha,” Zayn says. “Art is all about feelings.”

Louis makes an impressed noise. “ _Feelings_ ,” he mimics. “That is some deep shit, Malik.”

“It’s true,” he says. “Although, I suppose I can’t get your hopes up. You do sort of have to see what you’re doing.”

“Ha! Oh quit sugar coating it. That’s like saying, _yeah, you sort of have to see where you’re going when you’re driving_. I know, Zayn. It’s one of those things I have to completely rule out.”

“No but hear me out. Art is expressive. You translate how you’re feeling onto a canvas or a paper or whatever and it means something. No one becomes a good artist copying someone else because you’re not feeling anything. My thing is if you can’t talk about your art then it’s meaningless.”

Louis nods. “Wow. That’s actually quite nice.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty impressive when you don’t hit me with your cane.”

“Indeed you are. But I’m still gonna hit you with it when I can.”

 

 

 

 

Zayn has met a fair share of rebellious teens who claim to have a “complicated” relationship with their parents. He will admit that he falls under that very demographic, but he himself is a lot lower on the rebellious scale. He never would’ve thought that the first person he’d meet that would break the very last boundary of that scale would be a goddamn blind kid, but here he is, and there is Louis, outside and tugging at the edges of Zayn’s sanity with a ten dollar bill, a ten year old kid and a rock aimed right at his window.

“Zayn. Zayn-y Zayn. Zayn Malik. Zaaaaaaayn Malik!” Louis calls.

“Please Zayn!” the ten year old kid calls after, desperate, perhaps wanting to hydrate himself. They’ve been down there for almost an hour. Louis’ probably got an intricate system in practice, a roster of kids that he bullies. “I want to go home!”

“Zaaaaaaayn,” Louis calls again. Then there’s another rock that nicks the corner of his window.

It’s not that Zayn _doesn’t_ want to go out there. But then again, it is almost twelve in the fucking morning. Thankfully everyone in his family are deep sleepers, but Zayn is not. The barest breath whispered gently against his ear would stir him out of his slumber, and this, he theorises, is why he must be filled to the brim with anger. The amount of times the fucking _wind_ has woken him up in the middle of the night is befuddling.

“Zayn, Jimmy’s mother is going to get angry. Please open your window?”

Zayn, as much as he is comprised of toughness, anger and resentment, does feel for poor Jimmy, who at such a young age is already under Louis’ unforgiving syndicate, stripped of his liberation. So, conflicted, he approaches his own window and opens it, which at that moment a pebble gets him right between the eyes.

“Ah!”

“Haha!” Louis bellows, and Jimmy disappears from his side, pebbles scattering to the ground, and runs off to be swallowed by the night.

At that same moment, Johannah’s head pokes out from a window almost directly opposite Zayn’s and he dives to the floor like a soldier caught in the middle of a skirmish and endures overhearing Louis receive a lecture. Then there’s a blissful quiet before there are pebbles being launched rapidly, not even remotely close to his window, but he can hear them rebound from the wall.

Zayn grabs a jacket and puts some shoes on and, like the courageous human being he should be, goes to face Louis himself. His shoes crunch against the grass, so Louis turns towards the sound and grins knowingly.

“You came,” he says.

“I did,” Zayn says. “What do you want?”

Louis approaches him but he doesn’t have his cane, so he walks farther than he should and bumps his chest against his. Zayn holds him and pushes him away a little until they’re at an appropriate lad-having-a-conversation-with-another-lad-platonically kind of distance.

“You’re rampant,” Louis states.

“I’m what?”

“You’re rampant. Relentless. Rebellious. Forthright. You know. All the things you need to be to live life to the fullest.”

“Um, sure?”

Louis sighs heavily and stamps his feet a bit. “I want to live, Zayn Malik.”

“You are,” Zayn says. He grabs Louis’ hand and presses it against his heart. “See? Your hearts punching right back against your palm. That’s living. Can I go now?”

“No,” Louis says. “Just because your heart’s working the way it should doesn’t mean you’re living. I want to live so it feels like my heart is at my throat. I want to have the kind of fun that takes your breath away. _Freedom,_ Zayn.” As Louis says this, he fumbles to find Zayn’s hands. When he locates his wrists, he holds them and shakes them.

“What does this desire have to do with me?”

“Well, I mean, you’ve been to jail.”

Zayn shakes his hands away. “So—what? You wanna sell drugs? Run into the middle of a busy freeway and see if you can dodge the cars? You wanna do something insanely fucking stupid? Fine. But just because I’ve been to jail doesn’t mean I’m careless. I was careless once. I dealt with the consequences. Don’t think that because you’re blind your exempt from the real fucking world. Go back inside, Louis.”

He turns and walks away.

The next day Zayn longingly stares at Louis walking around in his backyard and finds himself upset because he’s succumbing to the tripe that is human emotions. The emotion in question being regretful. On top of that he douses himself with gruelling questions such as _had he been too harsh? Should he apologise? Fuck that—but still?_ But then there’s the big question: _is he wanting to apologise because Louis is blind?_ And the problem with that question is that if the answer was yes then that would mean he was being too sensitive. Louis is a normal person. So he’s apologising to Louis because he understands that he was being mean. But then again Louis is not a child. Perhaps he’s reasonable enough to contemplate that perhaps Zayn lashed about because he was pressed about other matters. But people aren’t that hyper-aware. If they were, then every single person in the world would be batshit fucking mental.

So after eons of careful contemplation, Zayn faces the world again. But before that he has to explain himself to his parents (“I’m gonna go visit the Tomlinsons”). Then when that interval has passed he wanders into the Tomlinson backyard. Louis must have the rhythm of his feet pushing against the ground memorised, because he says “hi, Zayn” before he even makes his u-turn to face him.

“Hello, Louis.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Louis says. “I mean—this morning I guess.”

 _Oh_. “Oh.”

“Were you gonna say sorry too?”

“Yeah. I was a bit of a dick.”

“You sure were.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s alright. I’m a bit of a dick too.”

“We can hang out if you want,” Zayn says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But like—not at the mall. I can take you to the places I tag.”

“Tag?”

“Graffiti.”

“Oh. What’s that?”

“It’s like—illegal art.”

Louis shrugs. “Fine. I don’t understand what that means but fine.”

“Gotta do it at night though.”

“Cool.”

Zayn packs a bag then picks up Louis that night at ten from his back patio. They walk together with Louis’ arm around his, his cane stuffed halfway down the back of his pants. Zayn’s a bit excited, can’t help but feel giddy whenever he makes an act of defiance. Not that he’s doing this with the purpose of defying anyone or anything, but to do things you’re not supposed to feels unequivocally like the way to live _right_ , your heart beating in every single crevice of your body and your breath hitching every now and then. It’s like being scared, but the good kind of scared.

“I feel like I’m jumping off a building,” Louis whispers.

“Don’t have to whisper. But I get it.”

“I’m living,” Louis says, and snickers a bit. “God, my parents treat me like a fucking anomaly. Apparently blindness means you’re incapable of doing anything.”

“Ha—I mean. It’s not funny.”

“No. You’re right. It’s so funny. They’re fucking morons,” Louis says. “Where exactly is this place we’re going?”

“There are lots of places we’re going to hit. But you gotta hold onto me all night. We’re gonna be on top of the fucking world at several points in this journey. I don’t want you to literally stumble off the edges of any buildings tonight.”

“Fine,” Louis says, and holds him tighter.

The first place Zayn ever tagged was a billboard hung on the side of a bridge. He did it when he was twelve and almost literally shit his pants. It was in winter, the air a kind of chilly that wrapped itself around your skin and numbed you. It was different now. The air was dense and humid and he felt the warmth cocoon his heart because of Louis’ presence. He couldn’t see his art, but he could experience the same feelings, the rush and the fear mixing together to create something breathtaking.

When they reach the bridge Zayn starts having second thoughts. There’s a protruding edge at the bottom of it that is only something like two metres away from the top. You had to jump to grab the top ledge and have a bit of strength to pull yourself back up. He thought about Louis and started thinking they could skip this part, but Louis wanted to _live_ , and Zayn related living to this kind of feeling.

“Where are we?” Louis asks when they’ve stopped.

“You know that bridge over the railway?”

“No,” Louis says. “Keep in mind my parents don’t let me out of the house. So—trains pass under where we’re standing?”

“Uh huh. There’s this billboard that I tagged on the side over where we’re standing.” He stands behind Louis and moves him forward till he’s pressed up against the edge. He takes Louis’ hands from his sides and presses them against the cemented edge. “When I was twelve I climbed over this and jumped down to the ledge of the billboard.” He heard Louis inhale sharply. “We don’t have to do this.”

“No. We—I want to.”

Zayn knew the edge was the size of a regular pathway. Painters went over the billboard almost every week to replace it with a new ad or to rub the graffiti off. It was built to support human weight, was his point.

“Me first,” Zayn says. He makes the easy climb down and lands with a thud against the metal edge. Then he looks up and sees where Louis’ hands are and feels as if the top is a lot farther than usual. “Okay. Um—put one leg over the edge.”

“What? How?” Louis says.

“Um—like turn to your side. Have you done that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Put your right leg on the ledge and just kind of—drop it over. Like you’re straddling it. You ever been on a rocking horse when you were a kid?” Zayn asks. 

“Have actually,” Louis says.

“It’s like that.”

He sees Louis’ right leg dangle over the edge and smiles. “Good. That’s good. Now bring the other leg over and just sit there.” Louis does that. “Okay. Now I just need you to push off. But gently. Not too rough. Not too far. Just move till your entire ass is off the ledge.”

“I got a big ass, Malik,” Louis says. “But are you sure?”

“One hundred percent,” Zayn says without fear. If they’re both scared then this won’t work.

“I don’t know.”

“Trust me, Louis.”

Then, he pushes off. And Louis yells when he’s suspended in air for that one millisecond before he’s in Zayn’s arms. The impact almost knocks them down, but Zayn steadies himself, Louis in his arms.

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” Louis chants.

“I got you,” Zayn says, then sets him down gently till his feet are flat against the ground. “Don’t move unless I say it’s okay. If you’re gonna make any sudden movement let me know.”

“Oh please,” Louis scoffs. “Now you’re being more unnecessarily cautious than my parents.”

“Well, just so you know you if you take two steps forward you’ll fall to your death.”

“Okay, okay I won’t fucking move.”

“Thought so.”

Zayn reaches into his bag and pulls out a can of spray paint. It’s a colour called midnight blue and he thinks about how it sort of matches with Louis’ sweatshirt.

“What’s graffiti again?” Louis asks.

“It’s like drawing on places you’re not supposed to draw on. Heaps of people do it. A lot of it is just pointless gang symbols and shit. I like to actually, like, make art. A lot of the time it’s called vandalism.”

“Oh. Yeah I hear about that on the news. Apparently people like to draw their junk. Like their willies.”

Zayn laughs. “Yeah people like doing that.”

“The human body _is_ art, Zayn.”

“You don’t even know what a willy looks like,” Zayn says, then immediately feels as if he’s gone too far. But if he did, Louis doesn’t act like it.

“I haven’t seen one, yes, but I have held my own bloody cock in my hand, Zayn. I can _pee_ you know. Blindness doesn’t affect my ability to pee. Or masturbate mind you.”

“I was not saying that and I was not thinking about your ability to masturbate. But thank you, I’ll make sure to think about that often now.”

“Aw. I hope you have an erection.”

Zayn scrunches his nose, but Louis does look delightful. But nothing’s been enough to just give him a boner on the spot. For the fuck of it, Zayn goes against all morals and ethics and spray paints a fucking dick over some guy’s face advertising toothpaste, and he feels bad. Not because what he’s done is illegal, but because he degraded his own artistic ability to two balls and a shaft. To make himself feel a little better, he adds some come spurting out of the tip.

“What did you graffiti?” Louis asks.

With discontentment and self-pity, Zayn says, “A penis. An ejaculating penis.”

He sees Louis grin. “Nice.”

In the distance there is the distinct honk of a train horn. “Aw shit,” Zayn says, then grabs Louis’ hand and pulls him back against the wall with him. “Might wanna hold on. Train’s coming. Things will get shaky.”

“I’m already fucking shaky.”

They hold each other’s hand and wait for the train to pass, and the moment it starts zooming underneath them Louis screams and Zayn sort of feels winded, like part of his soul is escaping him from the sheer adrenaline. The ledge keeps shaking underneath them but holds steady and when it’s over he feels like he’s been brought back to life.

“Oh my god,” Louis says.

“I know,” Zayn says.

“You’re holding my hand,” Louis says.

Zayn almost cackles at the absurdity of it, as if Louis is more astounded by the fact that Zayn’s holding his hand. As if this itself is the most monumental feat of his life. As if this is a fear that Louis has conquered. Zayn is holding his hand. Louis is holding Zayn’s hand. This, of all things, is amazing, shocking and disbelieving.

“I felt that shoot through every part of my body,” Zayn says.

“I know I know!” Louis shouts excitedly.

Zayn heads up first, then grabs Louis’ hands when he jumps to be let up too. They wait together by the bridge to regulate their breathing and Zayn wants to hold Louis’ hand again, to feel his heartbeat in the palm of his hand and help him remember that Zayn’s got a heart too, and that he can still live.

“Zayn Malik,” Louis says breathlessly. “I want to draw dicks all over town with you.”

“That, Louis Tomlinson, is the most romantic thing uttered in human existence.”

“Zayn Malik, would you like to draw dicks all over town with me?” Louis asks, stepping towards him and linking their arms together.

“Yes, Louis Tomlinson. I do.”

Zayn takes him downtown to the main strip of the area where all the shops are. It feels different to see everything closed, yet despite this Zayn feels like he has free reign over the whole area, as if everything is surrendering to the power of his paint cans and sheer will.

“Where are we now?” Louis asks.

“Downtown. You know where all the bread shops are and such,” Zayn says.

“Oh yeah. Mum used to take me here. It always smelled like freshly baked bread. What are we gonna defame next?”

They walk together up the pathway, Zayn alerting Louis of any cracks and sudden elevations in the ground, and it feels a bit like a date, and Zayn feels a bit cute as if he were courting someone. Then all he can start thinking about is if Louis’ having a good time, wonders if his heart is still beating so hard that it’ll burst through his ribcage and shoot out of him like a shooting star. Because Zayn feels like his is, and suspects he can’t give all the credit to adrenaline.

They stop in front of a fruit and vegetable market, closed up and locked away. “The owner of this store once called me a faggot,” Zayn says. “This was when I was fifteen. And I got so mad that I broke in through the back and sprayed insecticide all over his fruit. But then I realised that that could, you know, kill people. So I waited till morning there and when he showed up I told him what I did and I swear to god he almost killed me then and there. So he had to close the whole store for a few weeks till he could replace all the fruit with fruit that wasn’t sprayed with insecticide. To make up for what I did I had to work here for a year and a half till I quit. He treated me like shit.”

“So what are we going to do?” Louis asks. “Draw a dick at the front?”

“Mhm.”

“Can I?” Louis asks, hesitant.

“Sure.”

Zayn puts the can in Louis’ hand and stands behind him, guiding his movements as he spray paints a pretty solid dick right on the glass window. Zayn finishes off the job and writes a complementary _‘faggot’ is not a nice word’_ along with it and adds the finishing touches. He figures the message makes it obvious who’d done the deed, but then again he’s not sure if he even cares about getting into any more trouble at this point.

After that they wander the streets together, and Zayn feels safe with Louis on his arm even though it’s supposed to be the other way around. It’s eleven thirty when Louis says, “I want to go for a run.”

“Are you serious?” Zayn says, because he was never fond of running or anything that exerted too much energy. He was especially opposed to voluntary running.

“I’ve never properly ran before. Because I’m blind and my parents worry about me running onto the road. I just want to run.”

“It’s not that great.”

“Whatever. Let me live.”

Zayn takes him to the park and Louis grins when he hears the familiar crunch of their shoes padding over grass. Zayn already feels fresher being there and feels as if this night with Louis is like the first kilometre of his road to redemption, like the air is rejuvenating him and like Louis being able to live has an equal impact on him as it does on Louis.

He grabs Louis’ hand and starts jogging till Louis till Louis is following comfortable beside him, and once they become synchronised Zayn pushes Louis away and says _race you,_ which is how he found himself racing a blind kid in the middle of a park under the watchful eyes of two homeless people at almost twelve in the morning. Zayn had to keep looking back to make sure Louis didn’t run off in a completely different direction, but he kept a steady route, grinning and laughing and pushing through the humid air.

Zayn slows down and waits till Louis’ caught up to him to grab his arm. They end up falling together, melting into the grass, their breaths and fleeting giggles dying out like a song fading into nothingness. Everything feels louder, more alive, as if the grass was pushing up against their backs and the air was whispering things into their ears, and Zayn wonders if it’s true that when one of your senses can’t function properly then the other ones put in extra effort. He wonders if the world is always talking to Louis to make up for the fact that he can’t see it.

“This is the first time I felt like I wasn’t missing out on anything,” Louis says after a while.

“What do you mean?” Zayn asks.

“Like I wasn’t handed the short end of the stick. I feel like I’m living life like everyone else. Alive. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

When Zayn turns his head to look at Louis, it floors him when he realises Louis’ doesn’t have his glasses on. His eyes are grey and they captivate him, and Zayn feels like he’s drowning and spiralling into them as if they were the ebb and flow of the waves curling him into the vast ocean. Louis’ eyes are beautiful even if they can’t see him back.

“Why aren’t you wearing your glasses? If you don’t mind me asking.” Zayn says.

“Oh. Fair question. I’m not completely blind, so I can still sort of see light. I wear them because sometimes sunlight can damage my sight further and I kind of don’t want to risk whatever seeing ability I have. Yeah.”

Zayn nods. “Cool.”

“Not really. I wanna get high.”

“Ha! Even my dealer’s asleep right now.”

“No not that high. Actually yes that too. But I want to be at the top of the world again.”

“We will be. Just let me catch my breath. Damn you’re a handful.”

Louis laughs and rolls into Zayn, leaning his head on his shoulder. Zayn wishes Louis could see the stars so he could talk about them, so they can make images together, so they can make their own constellations. But it doesn’t bug him too much. He can enjoy the sky even more knowing that at the moment he’s enjoying it for two people. For now he tries to focus on things he can’t see, intangible things. So he thinks about how you can hear people breathe, but the main thing that you can extract from that is that they’re alive. Same for when you feel someone’s heart beat against the palm of your hand. Or when you hear someone laugh it’s an indication that they’re enjoying something. He thinks about how people are alive in ways he’s never thought about, and about how his feelings towards Louis, even if he can’t distinguish them at the moment, indicates that he can at least let his guard down after a year of building protective barriers around himself.

He takes Louis to a water tower, one that isn’t really used anymore, but still there. They weren’t as high off the ground as they were when they were on the bridge, but the breathlessness he feels when he peers over the edge is all the same. He and Louis sit down together, legs dangling over the edge, and Zayn tries to explain the stars to him. He fails, only because he was trying to be poetic about it, and Louis laughs and tells Zayn he makes him feel like a human being.

“Is this the last dick we’re drawing tonight?” Louis asks.

“Yep,” Zayn says, standing in front of where he’s supposed to paint. Except he’s not going to draw a dick. He’s going to try and be artistic about this and a little bit meaningful. So when he takes the grey out and starts trying to paint what he remembers Louis’ eyes to look like on the water tower that people drive by every day, he tells himself it means something. And the thing is, he has no doubt in his mind that it truly does.

 

 

 

 

Zayn rouses at one in the afternoon three days later because of rapid pressure being forced upon his face. When he opens his eyes he realises that someone is hitting him with a pillow.

“Wake up, Zayn,” Safaa says.

“What? It’s early.”

“It’s past noon.”

“Early,” Zayn states again. “How can I help you?”

“You’re busted,” she says, then sprints out of his room.

When he gets downstairs he receives unimpressed expressions from both his parents, and after a bit of yelling they tell him that the owner of the fruit and vegetables store downtown has (rightly) accused Zayn of vandalising his store window.

“And when did this happen?” Zayn asks nonchalantly.

“Three days ago,” Trisha says.

“And what evidence does he have?”

Yasser’s guard looks visibly shaken, but then he resumes looking angry when he says, “He’s sure it was you.”

“You can be sure of something but still be wrong,” Zayn reasons.

“Why—yes. Yes you can.”

The conversation ends there and Zayn wanders into Louis’ backyard, pleased to find him doing his rounds.

“Remember when we spray painted that dick on that shop window?” Zayn asks him, giving him a hug from behind.

“Uh huh,” Louis says.

“Yes. Well the lovely owner has traced it back to me.”

“Are you going back to jail?”

“No. He has no hard evidence. I’m still free.”

“For now.”

“For now.”

Zayn keeps his arms around Louis as they walk around in circles together, and he tries to ignore Johannah’s hard stares when she puts a glass of water down on the table on the patio.

“The perks of being blind is that they don’t suspect you of being a bad human being,” Louis says, shrugging Zayn off of him. Zayn doesn’t let up and latches onto Louis again, biting his shoulder. “I will wack you with my cane.”

“Do not do that. It really hurt the first time.”

Louis turns around and does try to wack Zayn with his cane, swinging it high and in all directions. Johannah comes out to yell at them a few times but Louis won’t quit till he’s detached Zayn’s neck from his body. Eventually Zayn swiftly ducks underneath Louis’ swing and tackles him to the grass, arms wrapped firmly around Louis’ middle. At this point Johannah comes out and sternly asks Louis to come inside and banishes Zayn home for the day, crying over how Louis could’ve cracked his skull.

The last few weeks until school starts blur together and by the time the first day back dreadfully arrives Zayn is convinced he lives at the Tomlinson house. Louis’ parents never stopped giving him hard looks, which fuelled his drive to go there every single day. His politeness never dropped and he still treated them with utmost respect, wanting to prove their prejudice against him wrong every single day.

The hardest part about being back at school was repeating a grade, which meant he had to start playing nice with juniors. The first person he met was Harry, who was the guy who busked downtown and who seemed to have a personal vendetta against buttoning up t-shirts all the way (“I just don’t see why I should restrict myself”). Harry’s morals on buttoning up t-shirts applied to his uniform, which meant that he liked to defy school policy.

“It’s not that hard to button your shirt,” Zayn tries to argue with him on their first lunchtime they spend together.

“But it is,” Harry says adamantly. “My nipples need to _breathe_.”

“Harry puts a lot of effort into nursing his nipples because he thinks they’re going to feed babies in the future,” Niall, some Irish kid who has the misfortune of being Harry’s friend, says.

“I know you think he’s joking,” Liam chimes. Liam is actually the only junior he wouldn’t be afraid to admit he likes. “But he is seriously not.”

“Do you moisturise them?” Zayn asks.

“What? My nipples?” Harry says.

“Yes your nipples.”

“No. Should I? Do people normally moisturise nipples?”

“Harry,” Niall says gravely. “I honest to god don’t think women who breastfeed even take as much care of their nipples as you do.”

“You guys make fun of me for being cautious but just you wait,” Harry says.

“Wait till what?” Liam asks.

“I don’t know…” Harry looks down to his lunch and whispers, “You’ll all see. Something will happen.”

“Stop praying to your pasta that our nipples will fall off and be normal,” Liam says.

Zayn tells Louis about his day under the tree in his backyard when he gets home. Louis listens to him as if Zayn were singing a song. After half an hour of talking Louis ends up with his head in Zayn’s lap and Zayn likes that Louis’ hair is the softest thing he’s ever felt.

“High school sounds incredible,” Louis says.

“It’s really not.”

“Oh shut up. You get to talk to people and be outside of the house.”

“Why don’t your parents let you go to school again?” Zayn asks.

Louis shrugs. “Because my parents are unreasonable maniacs who think if I walk two steps without my cane I will die.”

“Well a month ago you _did_ go out with some mysterious bad boy in the middle of the night painting dicks all over town. They have every reason to be worried.” Louis sits up and nudges him in the balls hard. Zayn groans. “Why the fuck would you do that?” he shouts, though he’s laughing along with the pain.

“I don’t know. My life’s not exciting, Zayn.” He sets his head back down on his lap, careful not to graze his stinging crotch. “Hey. Can I feel your face?”

“What?” Zayn says, still sort of in pain.

“Your face. I would like to feel it.” Without Zayn’s permission, he reaches his arms up anyway and sways them in the air until one of his fingers hits Zayn’s nose. He rubs his hands over Zayn’s face carelessly for a while until his movements become more careful, as if he were handling something fragile. His fingers trace down Zayn’s jawline and Louis’ head nods approvingly in his lap.“Sharp,” he comments. His index fingers meet at Zayn’s chin, then move upwards, grazing over his lips. “Soft,” he says. He moves one hand up and traces a finger from Zayn’s forehead down to the tip of his nose. Then his hands drop down back onto his chest. “The one thing I didn’t like was that your jaw was a bit prickly.”

“What? I’m becoming a man. I’m about to start growing true facial hair soon,” Zayn says, pressing his fingers gently against Louis’ cheeks as well.

Louis makes a face. “Gross. Don’t grow a beard.”

“Whatever.”

 

 

 

 

Things don’t really start to feeling truly settled for Zayn until autumn when he stares at his canvas for twelve minutes before finally deciding to do something with it. He decides to put in a fresh canvas and put the unfinished painting under his bed. He sketched out what he wanted to draw on seven different pieces of paper before deciding to wing it. But even now he can’t bring himself to actually lift his arm and do something. The second term has just started and he’s already got school work up to his ass. He thinks that he should probably do that, that he should drop his leisure time to do shit that he hates. But then he thinks _fuck everything_ and goes to take a nap.

When he wakes up he’s being called to dinner. Then after dinner he goes into his room and stares at the blank canvas again, feeling like it’s taunting him. The only thing taunting him is that he has a million things to do and he doesn’t want to do any of them, not even the things he likes.

He’s relieved to find Louis in his backyard when he goes over. They lie on the grass and distract each other from their lives to create this alternate universe of their own, where the only thing that exists is each other’s soothing voices and the real world doesn’t affect them, where their world sets its own pace and is unaffected by anything else.

“Hey, I want to ask you a question,” Louis says, sun more than halfway past the horizon.

“Go ahead.”

“You might get mad.”

“I don’t think I will.”

“Why’d you go to jail?”

Zayn hesitates.

“See you’re mad. Sorry.”

“I’m not mad,” Zayn says and grabs Louis’ hand, holding it. “It was a drug thing.”

“Did you sell drugs?” Louis asks.

“Yeah. I mean—it’s over now. In fact it was over for quite a while when someone who I sold drugs to got caught with it and told the cops they got it from me. And that was that.”

“Were your parents mad?”

Zayn scoffs. “No shit. Even now they can’t look at me like I was the same person I was three years ago. The only people who treat me normally are my sisters and you.”

Louis squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry my parents treat you like shit too.”

“Whatever. I don’t care about your parents.”

Louis grins. “Good. Neither do I.”

They hold each other’s hands until it’s completely dark, and even then Zayn doesn’t want to go home.   

 

 

 

 

Zayn has a partner project with Niall that’s due in less than a week and neither of them have started. This is the reason behind why Niall has been in his room for over twelve hours eating Cheetos and watching gay porn on the laptop he brought trying to get hard.

“Zayn,” Niall says, mouth full. “I think I can feel myself becoming gay.”

Zayn is trying. He is honest to god trying to gather enough research on Brazil to bullshit this assignment. The blank tab on his laptop says otherwise, but still. He’s trying very hard. “Niall, you can’t become gay.”

“No. I think this is pretty hot. Like, the guys are gross looking. But this butt action is pretty good.”

“Niall, put the porn away and help out.”

“I don’t know if I ever want to put my mouth on someone’s butt.”

“Niall!”

They get a solid hour of work done before Niall has to go home. They promise each other they’ll work on it on their own, but the moment Niall leaves Zayn has to beat off because the porn on Niall’s laptop was too loud even though he had his earphones plugged in. He came twice before he could even go back to stare at his laptop. But eventually the sheer strength of his orgasms catch up to him and he falls asleep at his desk.

Zayn works on that project right up until he gets suspended the day before it’s due. He sends Niall the work he’s done and apologises sincerely. Niall gives him a fist bump and Zayn has to endure a long lecture from Yasser until he gets home, and at that point he has to endure a long lecture from both Yasser _and_ Trisha, while his sisters laugh about how much he has failed in the span of almost one and a half years.

In short, mid-April to mid-May is almost just as bad as the year he spent in juvenile detention, and it kind of makes him feel as hopeless as he was getting out.

The night he gets suspended he goes to Louis’ house and the warmth he’s suddenly embraced in just by seeing Louis almost remedies the shitty day he’s been having. Louis keeps walking even though Zayn’s called his name a few times and he thinks that maybe Louis just doesn’t want to talk, until he tries to give him a hug from behind to relieve the unexpected tension and Louis shoves him off.

“You okay?” Zayn asks, though he’s already kind of livid.

“Yeah,” Louis says, hand stiff around his cane.

“Well, I’m having a bad day.”

“Of course you are.”

“The fuck is that matter with you?”

Louis stops walking. “Sorry. We probably shouldn’t talk to each other if we’re both having a bad day.”

“Or we could talk about it to each other,” Zayn says.

“No.”

Zayn scoffs. “Whatever.” He tries to stay mad, to keep up whatever appearance he’s been trying to keep up for the past few months. He tries, is the thing. And he shows how hard he tries when he stops walking away and turns back towards Louis and stands in front of him, stopping him from moving, and puts his hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he says. Zayn was never good at reading people’s expressions, but he didn’t need to be good at that when he met Louis. He can pinpoint his emotions from the way he feels, from the way he tenses beneath his fingers. So he puts his hands down and says, “Let’s just talk about it.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Louis steps aside and continues walking, so Zayn tells him about his day, about the project, about how that’s the reason why he hasn’t been around as often as he used to, about the suspension, about how his parents yelled at him and about how he hasn’t really felt like he’s been walking around in his own skin lately as much as he forces himself to think that he’s comfortable. Louis doesn’t say anything, just keeps walking, and when Zayn’s stopped talking Louis’ stopped moving, his back towards Zayn. Zayn presses his chest against Louis’ back and rests his forehead against his shoulder. “Sorry,” he says, though he’s not really apologising to just Louis, but to his parents too for letting them down, to his sisters for making them look bad, and to himself for never getting his shit together.

His fingers graze against Louis’ and when he’s gathered enough courage to link them together, Louis says, “Come inside with me.”

Louis sneaks him in quietly and closes the door when they get inside his room, propping his cane against it. He drags Zayn down to the carpet with him like he’d done the first time he allowed him into his house. “There’s a metal lunchbox underneath my bed. Can you please go get it?”

Zayn does. He slides it towards where Louis is sat cross-legged and he feels it as if to suspect it was what he wanted, then opens it.

“Holy fucking shit,” Zayn says when Louis tips it over to allow a thick roll of cash to fall onto the floor, stopoing at Zayn’s feet. “I didn’t even make that much dealing.”

“Ha,” Louis says. “Are the lights off?” Zayn nods. “Curtains drawn?” Zayn nods again. “So it’s dark?” Zayn nods a third time. Louis takes off his glasses. “My parents have been giving me allowance since I was like seven every single week. This is it. I haven’t spent a single bill since then.” Louis sighs. “They got all pissy at me today because I tried to apply for a job yesterday. I walked all the way downtown. I went to one of those bread shops. I didn’t have a resume or any qualifications, so I tried to use my blindness to make them feel bad. But shit—people don’t feel guilty like they used to these days. Or this neighbourhood is full of emotionless shitheads. Anyway—it was a failed endeavour. So yeah. That’s my life recently. I wanted the extra cash, but I think this is enough. Lottie gave up some of her allowance to me, bless her soul. She’s the only one who knows about the plan.”

“Plan?” Zayn asks.

“Yeah. To run away from home and liberate myself. It’s all typical teenager stuff, except I’m actually going to pull through with it. My aunt and uncle have been more than willing to take me off of my parents’ hands since birth.” Zayn wants to crumble at the thought of Louis running away. “I could walk to the train station. When we first moved here I mapped out the way there while I used to walk my sisters since they went to school a few suburbs down. I could walk there. Catch a train anywhere and just get off at the final stop—wherever that was. Anyway, it doesn’t sound like an elaborate plan—because it’s not—but I can make it work. But that’s if my aunt and uncle don’t, like, adopt me first.”

Zayn lets Louis talk. He lets Louis talk more about his plan, about how he wishes he could smell air so fresh that he forgets what it feels like to be at home. He tells Zayn about how he’s memorised the directions to all kinds of places. He tells Zayn about the aunt and uncle that treated him better than his parents ever could, about how he could walk there and live there. And he tries not to feel so hurt at the contentment Louis feels when talking about living a life—one that he hadn’t yet adjusted to include Zayn.

 

 

 

 

On Zayn’s penultimate day of suspension he gets jumped on the way downtown to buy food. It’s nothing serious, and he doesn’t yell about it, because at the back of his mind he already knows what this is about. He’s not livid, surprised, nor fearful when he turns around to see Shahid.

“My arm hurts,” he says, which isn’t a lie. “Don’t twist it like that.” 

Shahid grabs him by the neck and pushes him against the wall, sliding him up against it, then sternly reminds him about certain financial disputes that he must resolve before a certain deadline. He goes home feeling as if someone was still digging his fingers into his throat, cutting off his breathing, and he swears he’s about to pass out by the time he stumbles into Louis’ backyard. Louis almost falls backwards when Zayn crashes into him.

“Holy shit, Zayn are you crying?” Louis asks laughing until Zayn registers to himself that, shit, he really is crying. Louis drops his cane to cradle Zayn to his chest. “Sweetheart,” he says, and Zayn thinks he hadn’t meant to call him that, but Zayn calls him ‘baby’ anyway and wraps his arms around Louis’ middle. “Come inside with me,” Louis whispers into his ear and Zayn wants to cry harder, because in the past few months those have become his favourite words to hear in that order.

They end up inside, Louis’ parents working, his sisters at school. Louis sits him on his bed and wipes Zayn’s tears with the sleeves of his sweater.

“Sorry,” Zayn says, feeling like he’s said that word too many times in less than a year—or perhaps not enough times.

“Don’t keep apologising if you don’t know what for,” Louis says.

“That’s—deep.” Zayn laughs. “It’s dark,” he says. Louis nods, then takes his glasses off, and Zayn presses their lips together. He makes sure it’s careful, and he makes sure Louis knows how hard he tries with him through the way he cups his face and tilts his chin up so his lips can meet his. He makes sure it’s careful because what they have is indescribable, fragile, and worth treasuring, and he can’t rush it. So he kisses him slowly, each small fluttering kiss following one after another. Zayn kisses him like he’s a bubble that’s about to burst. The act of kissing him feels so important that he can’t put it into words.

Zayn stops kissing him. Eyes closed, he presses their foreheads together.

“Did that make you feel better?” Louis asks quietly.

“Yeah. It did.”

“Then we should do it again.”

They do it again. The feeling never leaves him, it never stops feeling important, and Louis never stops feeling soft and worth-preserving under his arms. His presses him down against the bed, moving his lips down his jawline, planting kisses softly like the way butterflies flapped their wings. His hands move underneath Louis’ sweater, Louis’ fingers weaving through his hair when Zayn drags his teeth against the column of his neck.

“Can I?” Zayn asks, tugging at the hem of his sweater. Louis nods, gasping, and Zayn pulls the sweater over his head, testing out his reaction when he takes Louis’ skin between his teeth. He makes a mark on his neck, kissing along his collarbones then back up to his jaw, to the corner of his lips, all over his face then back to his lips where Louis’ breath is swallowed in their kiss. “I just…“ Zayn gasps and drops his head on Louis’ shoulder, hands firm on his hips. “Baby, I just want to take care of you.”

Louis’ hands drop to his face and brings Zayn’s face up to look down at him. He wedges Zayn’s hips between his knees and says, “Please.” His fingers trace Zayn’s face, and he kisses where he locates his nose to be. “Take care of me. I want you to.”

Zayn forgets how to worry about things when he kisses his way back down Louis’ neck, his hands holding Louis’ arms up above his head. He moves his hands down over his arms, drops them to grip his waist when he bites the flesh of his stomach, kisses him on his hip when he eases his sweatpants down and Zayn thinks that he’s going to make Louis his new canvas, they’re going to make something together, something so beautiful that it transcends any art that can ever be made. They’re a masterpiece together, Zayn thinks, each time he kisses his skin. They’re a masterpiece.

 

 

 

 

The softness of Louis’ hair is always shocking to Zayn, and it takes a lot of effort to pull his hand away from it. He feels like the stuff on his mind taints the moment, but it doesn’t compare to the guilt he feels when he finally slides out of Louis’ bed and reaches underneath it to find the metal box. He’ll hate himself for it even if Louis never finds out, and when he takes what he needs, he carefully clasps it closed to return to the infinite warmth Louis emits while he sleeps.

 

 

 

 

Louis’ in his lap the next day, fingers dancing in his hair, Zayn’s face buried in the crook of his neck. Louis always smells sweet, and Zayn always makes an effort to smell nice for him too. Zayn likes that they’re gentle with each other, but even so the rawness of their feelings towards each other burns brightly in silent. Zayn doesn’t need to rip Louis’ clothes off every time he sees him for Louis to know about how he feels. Zayn likes that in an environment of resentment they can find everything they need in each other.

“Can you describe colours to me,” Louis asks.

Zayn smiles against his neck. “Really?”

“Really. Like, when I hear the word ‘blue’ I don’t know what to think about. I want something to think about when I hear those words.”

“Why do you have to ask difficult questions?” Louis pulls his hair. “Ow, ow, okay fine. You ready?”

Louis kisses his forehead. “Yes.”

“Okay. We’ll start with blue. When I think of blue I think of…” Zayn actually has to think about this. Blue is the colour of the sky. The colour of the ocean. The colour of his sister’s eye shadow. Blue is the colour of Louis’ jeans when he first met him. “…Okay,” he continues. “So blue is sort of lonely. It’s a very sad colour. People say they feel blue if they’re feeling sad. But when I think of blue I think of your jeans. Your jeans were that colour when we first met.”

“So what do I think about when I think of blue? Myself?” Louis asks.

Zayn shrugs, kissing his shoulder, pulling the sleeve of his baggy knit down to expose it and kisses his bare skin. “If I think about the first pair of jeans I saw you wear, then think about the sound of my voice when you first met me.”

“Fine. Give me another colour. That was lame.”

“Whatever.” Zayn bites him lightly. “Red. This is a good colour to talk about…” His hands slide up Louis’ back. “Red is a strong colour. Sometimes it’s used to express anger. Some people use it as a colour for love. It’s a very passionate colour…” He slides his fingers along the bumps of Louis’ spine, kissing his way up his neck, just under his chin where his skin is the softest. “Red is the colour of your lips after I’ve kissed you for too long. It’s the colour your face gets when I thrust into you real good, and you get all sweaty…”

“Enough,” Louis says, laughing as he forces Zayn to stop sucking on his neck. “Do another colour.”

Zayn smirks, lips moving back down as his hands move down towards Louis’ pants. “Fine. Purple. Purple is the colour your skin becomes when I suck on it for too long. So when you think about purple think about my lips on your neck, your stomach—when I kiss you gently on your belly and down towards you—“

“Stop!” Louis yells, laughing, and tries to hit Zayn, but he catches his arms and in the same movement catches his lips too. And really, when Louis thinks of any colour, he just hopes he thinks of him.

 

 

 

 

Zayn gives Shahid the money on the day of the deadline.

 

 

 

 

Zayn starts painting again. At first he pretends he’s not just trying to draw Louis, but then he stops lying to himself and puts in all his effort to making sure everything he creates looks just as beautiful and soft as Louis in the flesh. Soon there are hundreds of Louis’ in his room and his sisters laugh at him because he’s in love. Really, truly in love—so in love that he can see Louis even when his eyes are closed, so in love that he maps out exactly which way his hands should move when he paints his face on the canvas, so in love that he could do this even if someone took his sight away from him too.

He’s so in love that he can deal with it. So in love he can deal with the irreversibly different way his parents look at him, so in love that he can deal with feeling out of place, because the only place he needs to feel right is when he’s walking with Louis, sleeping with him in his bed, taking care of him.

He is so, so in love that he forgets about every wrong he’s done.

 

 

 

 

Towards the start of winter things are steadily getting to a point that feels less misplaced. Harry, Niall and Liam feel like true friends and he tries harder in school. Trying harder feels like less of a task and more like an accomplishment. And it’s all good. It really is. Except that it’s really not.

When he catches the train home he thinks that he’s going to ask Louis out on a real date. He’s going to hold his hand everywhere they go. This feels true when he walks through the side of his house into the backyard. Except this truth flees from him when Louis hears Zayn’s feet crunch against the grass, hears Zayn and turns towards the direction of his voice and punches him really hard.

Zayn only registers the action when he hits the ground. “Louis! The fuck!” His arm really hurts from the impact, which is strange to him, because dirt shouldn’t make that hard of an impact. His arm hurts nonetheless and his face aches. He tastes blood, and he also feels it seep out of his mouth. The taste of blood makes him queasy, so he coughs a bit and forces the vile to disappear back into the pit of his stomach.

“You son of a bitch,” Louis says. He’s not yelling, but his anger is nonetheless hard to ignore, and it’s hard to pretend he doesn’t know what this is about even though he’s convincing himself things aren’t how he thinks they’re playing out right now. “No one knows about where I keep the money except you.” Zayn, disorientated, manages to rise to his feet. “I counted it today. They’re all the same type of bill, Zayn. There were a bunch missing. You’re the only one who knows about where I keep the money. Don’t try to lie to me right now and pretend you didn’t take it.”

“I took it!” Zayn says. “I took it.” The second time around it feels less powerful. He wants to bury himself in the dirt he stands on. “I—I owed someone money back from my dealing days and I had to. I had to. I don’t—I can’t. I don’t have money. I—I had to.”

Louis disappears into the house and Zayn thinks that’s it.

 

 

 

 

The problem with Zayn’s art is that they’ve all resembled Louis. The problem with Zayn’s art style is that it’s pretty much _Louis_. The problem with all of this is that even though Louis’ not talking to him, even though he’s not walking around with him in his backyard anymore, is that Louis is still present in his life in the sense that his hands only know how to move to draw him, paint him, shade him in and create him with all the colours he can’t see. The problem is that every time he sees colours they remind him of Louis, the way his skin looks when he’s done taking care of him, the colour of his jeans. The problem is that when the constellations are strung up in the night sky he’s looking at them for two people, for the boy who could never see them. The problem is that he feels like he’s ruined the idea of colours for Louis, that when he thinks of _blue_ he thinks of what Zayn did to him, when he thinks _red_ he remembers wounds he gave him, when he thinks _purple_ he remembers that Zayn’s marked him for life. The problem is that when you love someone, everything reminds you of them.

When Zayn hasn’t seen Louis for almost an entire month, Johannah is a tornado bursting down Zayn’s door. The fact that she sees all the Louis’ all around Zayn’s room is the second concern, the first concern is that she’s accusing Zayn of kidnapping her son. Then, after she’s inspected Zayn’s room, she goes back downstairs and Zayn follows in suit like he’s caught in her whirlwind of destruction.

“Your son is obsessed with my son!” she’s screaming at Trisha when he gets downstairs. His parents look as befuddled as he is, and they actually seem like they want to defend him. But when they don’t, Zayn has to speak for himself.

“What’s happening?” he asks.

“Louis is gone and I thought he was here,” Johannah says.

“I don’t know why he’d be here,” Zayn says, although the thought that he is not depresses him. Then it clicks. “Wait. Wait. Louis is gone?”

Johannah breaks down crying and Trisha goes to console her. It’s non-negotiable that this is Zayn’s problem, and it’s non-negotiable that Louis’ absence hurts him the most. So he becomes his own storm and steals Yasser’s car to go looking for him. At first he thinks it’s raining, and his first thought is _shit shit shit Louis is out here alone in the rain_ , but then he realises he’s crying and all he wants is Louis to be _safe_. So he runs red lights and makes turns he’s not supposed to and u-turns all over the place until he finds the boy he’s hurt, until he finds the boy who made him remember why he loved drawing, until he finds the boy who he hasn’t told yet that he loves.

He remembers he doesn’t exactly have a proper license when he passes two cop cars, but they don’t stop him, as if they know that there is nothing more important than him finding his boy.

He almost passes him by the bridge, the first place he’d made art of, and he parks right in the middle of the road.

“Louis,” he says, breathless, and when he sees him shivering in only a t-shirt he almost cries, because this is the boy who’s always made him feel warm.

“I remembered the way here,” Louis says, body facing the edge. “I don’t know. Maybe the fact that I’m blind makes me remember things better. Is that stupid?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says. He’s really crying, because Louis won’t feel truly close to him until he can hold him. “That sounds really dumb.” Louis says nothing. “I know you’re mad. You can be mad at me forever if you want. But I just—I wanted to let you know that if I never found you it would’ve killed me. And I feel like I’m not really living unless I can hold you.”

He moves closer to him, so close that he can brush his fingers against his.

“Help me,” Louis says. He extends his hand towards Zayn and he holds it as Louis props his foot on top of the ledge, then steps up and stands on it. “Don’t let me go,” he says and Zayn says, “Never.”

Zayn holds both his hands from behind Louis, and Louis says, “The one thing I hate the most is that I forgave you the moment I punched you in the face. And the second thing I hate the most is that when I left the house I knew I would worry my parents, but I felt guiltier about worrying you. Zayn, I need you to know that I trusted you from the first time I linked my arm with yours.”

Louis falls backwards, and Zayn doesn’t even panic, doesn’t even need to think before moving his arms out to catch him. Louis lands in his arms as if he were drawn to them, and he fits there perfectly the way a key fits into a lock. Zayn lets his feet hit the ground and he says, “I always want to take care of you. I won’t even forgive myself for what I did to you. But I know I always want to take care of you. I want to be the one who gets to worry about you. Baby, I want to take care of you.”

“You can,” Louis says and falls back into his arms, burying his face in Zayn’s neck. “Take care of me.”

Zayn takes him home. He takes care of him.

 

 

 

 

Harry says that Zayn should enter his art into an exhibition. Niall thinks it’s creepy and Liam just wants to study. Louis doesn’t know how to behave in Zayn’s room for the first time with his friends, but he tells Zayn in secret that he likes Niall the best. Zayn makes a show of this, and since then all of them have been trying to impress Louis.

“Is all your art really of me?” Louis asks, sat comfortably between Zayn’s legs on his bed.

“Well, unless you have a twin brother, then no. None of Zayn’s drawings are of you,” Niall says. “It’s creepy.”

“I think it’s very beautiful, Zayn,” Harry says.

“I honestly don’t know what I’m doing here,” Liam says.

“Liam is boring and Harry is weird,” Niall says.

“Does Harry really have four nipples?” Louis asks.

“Yes,” everyone answers at once.

“Can I feel them?”

“Oh my god,” Liam says.

“Do I have your permission to feel someone else’s nipples, babe?” Louis asks Zayn.

“I love how you ask me for permission and not Harry. It’s his body you’re going to be feeling not mine. And if it were mind you don’t even need permission to touch it,” Zayn says.

“If Louis would like to feel my nipples then he may,” Harry says.

And the scene unravels before Zayn’s eyes: Louis feels all four of Harry’s nipples and he’s trying to decipher Harry’s facial expressions, figuring out if he’s getting any kind of pleasure from it. Niall tries to compare the scene to gay porn and Liam looks as if he wants to go home.

“Do his nipples spell ‘weird’ in braille?” Niall asks.

Zayn throws a pillow at him and Liam starts packing up to go home.

Zayn does submit his art into an exhibition as a joke and somehow the gods manipulate fate to—not-as-a-joke—have it accepted. The exhibition is three days away, which means that Zayn has three days to make Louis go. Louis’ cheeks are glowing pink from just having been sucked off, and Zayn thought that his efforts were good enough to receive a yes without any hesitation. Except he was wrong to assume so and Louis is still trying to put up a fight. He’s got Louis’ legs in his lap and he’s trying to be charming and give him foot rubs, but Louis won’t let him because he’s ticklish.

“My parents won’t let. They think I’ll die. Also I’m grounded forever because of that time I ran away in winter. Remember that?” Louis then grins and sits up to cup Zayn’s face in his hands and kiss him. “This super cute boy saved me that night after my mother tried to accuse him of kidnapping me and hiding me in his closet.”

“Mhm. I remember that boy.” Zayn kisses Louis’ nose. “I remember how scared that boy was. You should make it up to him.”

“Oh—but I shouldn’t feel obligated to do so,” Louis says, then bites his lip.

“But you should. Because that boy says so.”

“Um, but I’m me. Meaning I won’t do things I don’t like. Sorry.”

Zayn pinches his butt. “Please.”

“I’ll think about it.”

 

 

 

 

The thing about Louis is that he’s a bit of a pain. He also likes to joke around and do things like say he won’t show up to things but does. Louis is a pain in the butt, and that is why he spanks him in front of Harry, Liam and Niall instead of kissing him when he shows up to that art exhibition.

“You should be thanking me,” Louis says. He kisses him. “I, yet again, risked my life and relationship with my parents to pay someone from the neighbourhood to drive me here for your stupid art that I can’t even see.”

“It’s all ugly like you,” Zayn says, and Louis hits him with his cane.

When the exhibition’s all packed up and there’s no one left except for a few scattered stragglers and staff, Zayn dances with Louis to a slow acoustic song and decides that, under the watchful eyes under all the other Louis’ he’s created, he’ll tell him he loves him.

“You what me?” Louis asks without lifting his cheek off of Zayn’s shoulder.

“I love you.”

“You love what?”

Zayn sighs. “I love you.”

“What love me?”

“ _I_ love you.”

“Sorry I didn’t get that.”

Zayn knows what Louis is trying to make him do. And one of the problematic habits that Zayn has picked up over the past few months is that he enjoys indulging Louis. So he lets go of Louis, steps back and shouts, “I LOVE YOU, LOUIS TOMLINSON.”

Louis laughs then shouts, “I LOVE YOU TOO, ZAYN MALIK”

Zayn thinks about how he spent hours upon hours trying to replicate this boy’s face on all kinds of surfaces for the sake of his art, and he thinks about how he’ll slow dance with this boy and yell loud enough for everyone in the immediate vicinity to know how much he loves this boy. Zayn thinks about how spoilt Louis is to have him. Then he takes second glances at his artworks and back at his stupid boy and thinks that Louis might be spoilt, but he’s the lucky one to get to worry about him all the time.

Louis’ giddy on the walk home, talking to Zayn about everything and anything all at once that his words get hard to keep track of, and Zayn has to kiss him to slow him down. When Louis starts speaking again the only thing that Zayn makes out is, “I want you to fuck me.” It’s not like Zayn _hasn’t_ fucked him, but to hear him so say aloud and unapologetically is still new. Louis doesn’t like to beg.

“You want me to what you?” Zayn says, swinging their held hands together as they walk towards home.

“I want you to fuck me,” Louis says, volume of his voice challenging.

“You want what to fuck you?”

“I want _you_ to fuck me.”

“You want me to fuckwhat?”

Louis grabs his face and kisses him hard. “I want you to fuck me,” Louis whispers against his lips, as if now their entire relationship were a secret. It wasn’t, but Zayn liked it when both of them treated it as such, like a tiny thing they kept in their back pockets. It was something that only they could peek at in secret, something no one else could understand.

Louis insists that Zayn take him to his house. They mostly hang out in Louis’ room, so fucking him in his room is something relatively new. He pins Louis up against his door, at this point Louis’ pants are gone, and Zayn grips Louis’ thighs when they wrap around his waist. Zayn likes to tell him what things to remember. He tells him to remember his teeth, the way they mark his skin, he tells him to remember how his lips make his skin hot, the way he licks his nipples, the way he presses Louis against him and pushes him into the bed, the way Louis feels like his and his alone. He fucks him slow, tells him to focus on how well he fucks him, the way his cock feels inside him, to keep his eyes closed and think about how good he and he alone can make him. Zayn comes soon after Louis and he collapses on top of him, burying his face beside his and locking their fingers together.

“Zayn,” Louis pants.

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

Zayn says nothing. Just kisses him.

 

 

 

 

Louis is at the end of his bed the next morning, hunched over, and Zayn likes the way he looks, admires the bumps of his spine. He takes a notepad out of his side drawer and sketches the way he looks for a bit until Louis asks, “Are you drawing me?”

Zayn abandons his notepad and sits up to press kisses up his spine towards the back of his neck where he likes to suck and leave bruises.

“Zayn, you’ll take care of me right?” Louis asks.

Zayn nods against his back and wraps his arms around Louis’ stomach, sucking his skin harder. When he’s done leaving a mark he says, “Of course.”

“And you know that taking care of me means more than just being there for me.”

Zayn lets Louis talk about his plan again. About the money. About the aunt and uncle that want to take care of him more than his parents do. About how his parents agreed to let him live with them.

“I’m not going to say bye to you,” Zayn says at the end of everything, his arms still wrapped around Louis’ stomach and his lips still against the back of his neck. “You won’t be far if you lived with them. An hour train ride away. We could deal with that. I’m not going to say goodbye to you.”

“It will be hard,” Louis says. “We don’t think it will be. But it will be. Nothing’s ever easy.”

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Don’t tell me we have to say goodbye to each other. Fuck that, Louis. I thought I wouldn’t be able to live the way I did before juvie, but I was wrong. I made it harder than it looked. Don’t do this right now.”

He kisses the back of his neck again.

The thing about Louis is that he likes to complicate things. Sometimes he does it on purpose, like when he hits Zayn with his cane, but other times it’s because of the way he is. Louis doesn’t like goodbyes, so he makes them harder than they have to be. He likes to make sure everyone’s hurting before they say bye so it hurts less, but Zayn doesn’t let him do that this time. So when Zayn buys Louis a phone with his exhibition money and promises to call him in two hours when Louis gets settled in his new home, he means it. Louis doesn’t stop kissing him and it almost makes him, his aunt and uncle miss his train.

Zayn lies and calls Louis ten minutes after he’s boarded the train and goes to the park where they’d ran together that night, and stands at a specific spot that allows him to see the grey eyes on the water tower that he’d spray painted months ago on the same night. Louis is his boy, his ridiculous, complicated boy. Maybe it was that night when he spray painted those eyes that he really started making art that he loves, and looking at it makes him remember why trying stopped becoming so difficult.

 

[the end]

**Author's Note:**

> hi i'm kaydee i used to write for the kpop fandom but now i'm 1d trash dang 
> 
> sometimes i write really wanky shit and other times i try to be a bit funny. this is an example of my writing when i want to be wanky. 
> 
> [tumblr](http://zaynsexpensivehaircut.tumblr.com)  
>  


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